[clackers]

I have always wondered if folks with Universal Healthcare (we don't have it here in the US) can actually use it outside of our solar system?

If you think your local Blue Cross has red tape, Vincent, the branch on Alpha Centauri is outrageous.

Now, gentlemen, let's respect Auzzie Phoenix's wishes and not turn this into another 'Why I won't buy another K-3' thread!

[Not a Number]

You can use the Space Travel Calculator here:
Space travel calculator

A one way trip to the newly discovered K-186f (about 500 light years) at a constant 1g acceleration:

Max velocity: 0.9999925404694808 C (speed of light)
Observer lapsed time: 501.93500061650957 years
Traveler lapsed time: 12.11634248427413 years

So you would need systems that have a run time life of at least 13 years as well as supplies for the same amount of time just for the trip. You can play with the numbers in the calculator to give a rough idea of what you are facing.

Of course you would need a propulsion system capable of a constant 1g acceleration in the first place.

[clackers]

Of course you would need a propulsion system capable of a constant 1G acceleration in the first place.

Gotcha! 😀

The ramjet is mooted for this, right, because you need 12 years of fuel with other methods.

[micromacro]

As far I read, mammal reproduction in space was not successful. With modern ships we need to leave the distance space exploration to robots.

[Auzzie-Phoenix]

I do know that our current materials for radiation shielding are insufficient for being in space. The cosmic radiation just seems to penetrate everything we take up there. First and foremost this problem will have to be severely reduced/eliminated before any long distance travel is feasible. Other top priority hurdles are oxygen replenishment, sustainable food, and potable water and reclamation methods for said water. I don't think that interstellar space flight is impossible within one's lifetime, it's just highly improbable with the multitude of factors needing to go into the solution. Add to that fact that even if it were possible, governments, corporations, and most people refuse to look that far ahead and focus more on short-term projects with near term military and monetary returns. Remember that there was a time when the notion of going up into space, let alone reaching the moon didn't seem possible in one's lifetime.

While the people who leave out on the interstellar travel and those waiting for news back home might never see the result, future generations will, barring a catastrophe that prevents completion of the mission. Some people will say "why don't you try to fix the problems already present on earth before you try to leave it?", well the problems will never go away. Fix one and new ones pop up. Maybe it's a sign of the times, but in the past people used to look to science for answers to the seemingly impossible, these days just about all you can interest people in is which kardashian's marriage is on the rocks this week. There are a multitude of problems on earth right now that are growing every day that may in the future be solved by interstellar travel. One such problem that is growing is the ever so increasing overpopulation problem. Without going out to find new habitable spaces, we will in time (as long as it takes), eventually run out of space, resources, and capacity to feed everyone. We really do need to start thinking of things further out as a species. If 50 years isn't enough time to solve a problem, perhaps it can be solved within 100 years, but if we do nothing then we start at square one when we should be at least on square 3 or 4 in that time.

Sorry for rambling.

[jpzk]

Observer lapsed time: 501.93500061650957 years
Traveler lapsed time: 12.11634248427413 years

Ok, then this would mean ... if the traveller(s) ever come back to earth that they would have lost all of their relatives, acquaintances, friends, etc. ... ?

I find this thread quite fascinating actually : a good read!

Cheers!

[Not a Number]

Ok, then this would mean ... if the traveller(s) ever come back to earth that they would have lost all of their relatives, acquaintances, friends, etc. ... ?

If they turned around immediately and returned to Earth the travelers would have aged about 26 years while about 1003.8 years would have passed on Earth.

[clackers]

Impressive ramble, AP. ☺

Ben Elton's (he of Black Adder, The Young Ones, etc) wrote an enjoyable novel called 'Stark', about a billionaire's secret attempt to escape a dying Earth to colonise elsewhere.

It's an elitist strategy, of course, because some people go, and four billion get left behind.

It doesn't substitute for multilateral economic, military and environmental agreements, however hard *they* look to bring about.

[Auzzie-Phoenix]

Impressive ramble, AP. ☺

Ben Elton's (he of Black Adder, The Young Ones, etc) wrote an enjoyable novel called 'Stark', about a billionaire's secret attempt to escape a dying Earth to colonise elsewhere.

It's an elitist strategy, of course, because some people go, and four billion get left behind.

It doesn't substitute for multilateral economic, military and environmental agreements, however hard *they* look to bring about.

Something tells me you might like watching a japanese anime series called Planetes. While not centered around interstellar travel it does cover a very wide range of potential issues in a very realistic way. For something set around near future times and more mundane space topics (such as trash in space damaging passenger ships, etc...) it does present things in a plausible and realistic way.

[clackers]

Thanks for the tip, AP!

[i_trax]

we talk regularly about it at my work, one comment was that in the near future technology it might take to get to the close planets thousands of years ( hundreds on board).
we might get a paradoxal situation, with technology improving faster and faster we might get vehicles which departed earth 100,200 or 300years later and actually arrived at the destination before the original "virgin" flight, even more , the original pioneers might arrived and found already well established Colony......

[Tom S.]

6 * 9?

Google Douglas Adams for the 42 reference.

[clackers]

Google Scott Adams for the 42 reference.

Er, Douglas Adams.

[Tom S.]

Er, Douglas Adams.

Duh, yeah. I just got up! Corrected! Thanks.

[WPRESTO]

I have not read all the replies here, but re: travel to the nearest star, based on everything we know, it isn't even vaguely possible. Solar power, BTW, is out because it would be too weak for any purpose before the ship left the solar system. The fastest vessel we have launched took nine years to get to Pluto, a distance of roughly 4.4 billion km. The nearest star is roughly 4 light years away. A light year is about 9 trillion km, so the star resides at about 40 trillion km. At the speed of the Pluto mission, it would take over 800,000 years to reach the nearest star.* Chances are, any living organic things sent on such a mission would have evolved into something at least slightly different. As far as a self-sustaining ship, one that can raise all it's own food, generate all its required energy, etc. the experiment of creating a "biodome" that was entirely self-sustaining here on Earth failed. And who should go with no possibility of returning? I vote for all politicians to be first in line, and maybe all lawyers second, certainly both of these ahead of used car salesmen.

*It was always difficult to get students to grasp scale: the minute size of a human body cell, the gossamer thinness of a biological membrane, the size of the entire Earth compared to Mt. Everest,** or astronomical distances.

**Description to students: Suppose we made a globe, a model of the Earth, on which mountains stood up and oceans basins went down to their correct relative size. If we made such a model at one ten-millionth the size of the real Earth, the globe would be about 1.2 meters (about 50 inches) in diameter. Mt. Everest would protrude upward less that one millimeter, about 1/32 of an inch.

Pretty sure I've done these calculations correctly, at least to approximate values. And if the time is only 750,000 years instead of 800,000 years, it means you need only about 30,000 generations of humans instead of 32,000 generations to get there, assuming 25 years per generation. And when those people arrive and find nothing habitable, they'll have to make a U-turn and head home, if anyone remembers where that is. You think it is any easier for aliens to get here? And if they have the technology to do it, why oh why would they elect to land in Roswell??? It is too pathetically, childishly absurd.